Basket



March 30, 1948. w, DALE 2,438,844?

BASKET Filed June 20, 1945 Patented Mar. 30, 1948 UNITED. STATES PATENT OFFICE BASKET Wallace W. Dale, Barre Center, N. Y.

Application June 20, 1945, Serial No. 600,441

1 Claim.

This invention relates to baskets.

More particularly it relates to baskets used for the harvesting of tomatoes and other vegetable products; but it can be used with advantage for other purposes.

It provides an improvement upon what was disclosed in the Patent 2,367,566, granted to me January 16, 1945. The invention there patented deals particularly with the problem of p ing the occurrence of mold and other deleterious micro-organic contents sometimes found in canned and bottled products of fruit and vegetables. Such deleterious contents are herein referred to by the general term mold; and the word fruit is herein used to indicate generally all kinds of fruit and vegetables for whose handling the basket of the invention is applicable.

The evil which is to be eliminated is well illustrated in the tomato products packing industry, where mold is of such great importance that the Food and Drug Administration of the United States regularly makes inspections in factories and in markets, to seize and to condemn vitiated tomato products. This evil is considered so unavoidable that the Administration has established a permissible mold count tolerance. Nevertheless many thousand cases of tomato products are condemned by government agents and courts, each'year, because of this evil, notwithstanding care exercised by packers; and these condemna much anxiety of packers, as well as occasioning trouble and loss.

The said patent discloses my conception that the evil arises largely from the baskets which are ordinarily used to convey freshly picked tomatoes from the field to the factory. Such baskets are made of wood slats. In the basket some of the fruit. encounters rough surfaces of wood and jagged points of tacks and staples by which its skin becomes broken with the consequence that deposits of juice and pulp become absorbed in crevices and between fibres of the wood of the basket, to an extent and with a permanence which are beyond the power of complete removal by any commercially practicable cleaning process. Such deposits, left by former contents of a basket, can constitute nutrient culture media in which fungus or other germs of microscopic size can develop foci of growth which, in further use of the basket, can infect fruit that comes to have contact with any of .them. Delays occur in the handling of harvested fruit, especially when simultaneous ripening requires the fruit to be picked faster than the rate at which it can be handled by the factory. These contacts and delays, coupled at times with adverse weather conditions, give opportunity for spread of microorganic infection while the fruit waits in baskets, or in bins after being dumped from baskets.

The said patent further discloses my conception that the fruit can be protected from mold infection by providing a suitablestructure for the basket into which it is to be harvested. This structure tends to prevent the occurrence and retention of deposits from broken fruit, thus to inhibit the occurrence of foci of infection; and also tends to prevent contact of fruit with such foci, if it nevertheless happens that any of such ever are carried by the basket. The patented basket is made of slats of smooth non-fibrous material, so assembled that they and their fastenings are devoid of interiorly projecting edges or points that could break the skin 01 contained fruit, and devoid of crevices in which residues of former contents could be touched by fruit held in the basket, if any such residues should be so contained. Thus all touchable surfaces are fully cleanable under commercial conditions, and the basket is one that routine washing will sterilize to a degree that is efiicient for avoiding the infection of fresh fruit with mold. And so the basket structure can operate to eliminate from the fruit packing industry what I believe to be the main source of mold.

The present improvement makes a basket which is both better for attaining and maintaining this state of sterility, and is lighter, stronger, better for handling and less expensive in manufacture. Its sheet wall is continuous through rib-like deformations of curvilinear cross-section, Whose arrangement relative to each other constitutes a sort of circular multi-stemmed T embodied in the wall. The horizontal line of the T preferably has greater spread and depth of cross-sectional curvature than the vertical lines of its multiple stem. This horizontal rib, preferably located at a. little space below the top edge of the basket, may be a circumferential salient projection outward from the side wall of the basket, formed in thesheet stock of the wall. When set with its curvature extending to about two inches below the top rib, as illustrated, this constitutes a circularhandle of the basket affording a firm grip at every place around the top. When a persons palm rests on the top edge, his thumb and fingers fit under good oblique holdhorizontal ing surfaces both inside and outside of this curve of the wall of the basket. The T-combination of a horizontal rib with several vertical ribs set at intervals around in the tapering wall makes the structure so very strong that it can be made of relatively thin and light sheet stock and yet never be at risk of collapse or deformation by any ordinary mishandling.

- This basket can be made in quantity at low cost by -simple sheetrmetal stamping. 'The wall tended that 'the patent shall "cover, by suitable expression in the :accompanyingclairn, whatever vfeatures :of i patentable {invention "exist in the disclosure :made.

In thexirawing:

Figure l-is ;a side elevation of a "basket embodyingzt-he invention Figure .2 is a similar viewin :me'dial vertical section, :as :on the line 2-2 of Figure -3; and

Figure '13 za'ffragment of a:plan of the same,

in section ionthe line of 3-:3"oi.Figure -1.

"Walls, which are "preferably conical, may be converted :from :fiat sheets by :a stamping process, which'cmayin'clude the punching of any desired perforations Zlljandthe pressing out of each wall sheet "to make the linear ribs, vertical H5 and These ribs are curvilinear deformations :of the :sheet, preferably outward, so

"that ever-y bit o'fzsurfa'ee which faces inward, and is liable .to be toucheduby any fruit in the basket, may :be --:o'f smoothly rounded character.

"where the margins of the sheets l0, [2 are rolled about a binding wire 24, and extends down the wall an :inch or two, 'an'dihas an outward depth of a half inch or so, the lower 'part of its exterior surface and theiupperpart of its interior surface ea-ch constitute an :oblique surface facing downward, :under the interior of which faces both thumbs canengage, and under the exterior of which surfaces :all other of a 'persons fingers can engage, with a pinch-grasp between thumb and fingers, .for easily carrying a filled basket. The a-rcuate cross-sectional character of this rib provides an arch formation extending horizontal- 'ly around the region of the basket where it is,

i. e., in the region where "the top ends of the vertical ribs are. The consequent stiffening of this region tends tozmaintain the top portions of the vertical stems so stiiliyyat their distance from 4 the center of the basket that the body of the basket wall cannot be easily indented there or anywhere below. The horizontal rib support of the top ends of the vertical ribs combines with the vertical extent of those ribs to make ineffective every inward crushing force unless' great enough to bend one of the ribs. Thereby the stiffness which those vertical ribs provide, against a bending from their straightness, becomes eiiective to prevent :acollapse of thezbasket by lateral compressiom'thus making secure'the form of the basket as a whole, notwithstanding its weakening by removal of metal from the wall between the ribs at the holes 20. Also, the circular bulge, which the top l8 of the T-combination makes in the basket wall, extends out far enough to constitute anloverhanging ledge or lug, by which the basket restsloosely, on the top bead 22 of the basket below it, when nested in a stack, so that the difliculty ordinarily experienced in separating conical baskets out of -astack :does not exist.

The muscular-relief character of the oblique surfaces results because the altitude, of this salient projection from the side wall, approximates the thickness of a human-hand; and the interior -,-gorge between its upper concave and lower concave surfaces has width to receive a human thumb. The vlower 'outer'face combines with the upper .inner face to constitute a circumferential handle of great practical utility for a two-handed lifting of the-basket rand-contents. This is because-thebulgeramps,-e-xtending outward and extending inward, function as lugs under which .apersons thumb on the inside, and, on the outside, his .forefinger backed by the strength a of the other -fingers an-d-of the hand and of the wristcan-engageas under lugs. The-muscular difiiculty .of .gripping -a heavy "basket by frictionally pinching its margin is eliminated. A mild pinch-grasp putsthethumbsand all-of the fingers under the ,lugs, so that no muscular effort is needed to get a grip. A persons hands hecome ledges .on which the basket-hangs; and his musculareflort becomes limited to approximately only that needed to sustain the weight.

The holes providefor cleaning by immersion, and one or more of \them, .as 2.6, in the bottom, may be largeenough to admit ahose nozzle.

The seams of .3. basket thus made will have narrow crevices 28 open toward the interior of the basket. iIfit shouldhappen that fruit juice is not fully removed from the deeper parts of these crevices by zasroutmeucleaning, it will-nevertheless be true that all :parts tof the basket wall which can be touched by fruit contained within the basket are accessible for thorough cleaning by routine methods. However, these crevice can be filled with solder-or other-soft metal having a smooth face, if "found desirable, so that the interior face of the .basket 'wall is really smooth, in the sense of not having either a roughness that will abrade a skin, or ,a crevice that can maintain .a source v.of infection. A'basket thus constructed can be .made of sheet metal at such low cost, and with such lightness, strength and ease of handling andfor so many-years of durabilit-y, that it-ha-s utility for many and various purposes; while *it :has iespecial'utility in those branches oi'the :ifruit packing industry in which there is dan-gerof mold.

I claim:

A portable metal container having a bottom and a surrounding perforated side wall :of stiff sheet material having 1a beaded top edge, the

side wall tapering inwardly and downwardly to the bottom, the top being open, characterized in that a portion of said side wall, located in close proximity to its top edge, extends outwardly from the main line of its taper and also extends downwardly at a distance outwardly from that line and forming a substantially frusto-conical surface and having a return bend in an arcuate path to that line, these said extents of side wall constituting an interior lug facing downwardly, an interior recess under that lug, and an exterior lug facing downwardly, the said lugs, recess and edge of the wall being combined to constitute a continuous peripheral handle by which the con- REFERENCES CITED The following references are of record in the file of this patent:

UNITED STATES PATENTS lyumber Name Date 908,579 Knobloch Jan. 5, 1909 1,402,830 Boyle, Sr. Jan. 10, 1922 2,060,468 Mitchell Nov. 10, 1936 

